Is Prediction Killing Astrology? ISAR Panel at UAC 2018

[Music] [Music]

I'm ready if you're Steve I think that's

what I understand are there extra seats

yes there's a I want you to do certain

actions so here it's a nose all right I think it's time for us to start everyone please take your seat [Music]

progressive woman almost killed Mary Jane's identity versus and all right

so I have to introduce today's debate in

the beginning in both English and Chinese hello everyone welcome Donna how

is everyone ready jumpy Halima okay

all right let's begin hi Shiva all right all right I know that there was some who

objected to the title of this debate his prediction killing astrology but quite frankly we wanted a title that would

excite some objections and maybe stimulate debate because that's what this is about I want to welcome our distinguished

panel that's here and I'm going to start over here with Sam riddles right here Christine Skinner

Stephen Forrest Chris McCrae Rick Levine ORS I got some words for you Rick it's

coming up don't worry and Chris Britton all right like like

most of us in fact why don't we give

them it began I want to remind you who are SR members that you elected this

panel all right yes you did you chose it's been and so that's part of what you know these are likes to reach out and

find out what it is that you want all right now like most of us who come to

you act this panel shares a passion for astrology which we we all have in like

us they also believe in responsible for casting though the question sometimes is

what constitutes a responsible for cast and that's what is at the heart of this debate all right now we've got some

rules and before I go into these rules I want to I want to make a special thanks to Chris Brennan who took the initiative

to set up the camera and the recording equipment for this debate well thank you very much Chris

and one more thing this goes to Rick back in 2012 a new Act I quoted Jeff

shower as saying that when it comes to forecasting I'd rather be meaningful than accurate and then at the end of the

when I said this Rick came over to me he said that was me he said that not Jeff

Jeff Jeff stole that from me so I wanted to set the record straight and let you know that was from Rick Levine okay so I'm acknowledging you right actually

Jeff and I used to argue about who said what we would attribute each other and the other person would go no I got that from you no we don't we don't know so you could go back and forth of who had

the good advice and the bad advice you okay all right all right the panelists have their rules in front of them and

I'm going to go over those rules okay you're ready first each of you will be allowed to make an opening statement of

between five and ten minutes and I'll set my phone here with a little alarm for nine minutes to let you know when you're almost at your limit then what

all of you have finished with your opening statements I'm going to ask you three questions so each of you will have two minutes to reply to each question

then after the third question you can direct a question to one of your fellow fellow panelists if you would like in other words if you feel compelled to ask

a question or you're curious about something with each other you can question each other then when that's done everyone here gets to ask

them questions we want to keep your questions as concise as possible and the answers will be two minutes

each alright everybody got the rules memorize okay so I'm gonna start from left to right but I'm going to start with Sam over here to make the opening

statement and we're just going to move in this direction so there another microphone what's that no microphone well we have

this right here yeah that's all we've got look silly Kari we would kiss all right so I'm gonna start I'll start my

timer and here we go so let's start with the admission that I don't think anything can kill astrology even thousands of years that we haven't

killed it don't think we can but I don't think prediction is failing astrology I think astrologers are failing astrology many folks who correctly called the

twenty twelve election didn't do so in 2018 and vice versa this is common with prediction we often do not notice the people who get things wrong once they get something right and vice versa

prediction isn't easy whether you're predicting or receiving the prediction what's important is figuring out the spirit in which we should give and receive predictions

what's killing that spirit is the arrogance of the astrologer to think how we see a chart is definitively how the world must appear we succumb to a

certain kind of fundamentalism as a former fundamentalist Christian preacher and probably here I know literalism when I see it and it's

interesting how fundamentalists can have a warped sense of time we can perceive some of the worst things happening imminently all the time we might often think that one

possibility out of many has the highest probability of happening we come to place a higher premium on the event and our prediction than the experience of

the event or the person having the experience we might miss how folks need more of our love and compassion than our self congratulation for getting a

prediction right and I can't help but feel that this fundamentalism always leads to a certain failing this failing happens in some important ways so this

to give you an overview it's a question of technique misperceiving our biases not thinking about how things appear in a broader context so let me briefly

review how each of these pathways to Hwy fail astrology work how we fail in terms of prediction a question of technique many

astrologers and probably many in this room has a belief that we find the perfect technique right that thing that will set us off and be able to predict

and know for certain whether it's from perfections or whether it's from looking at some particular solar arts how do we do it we can arrive at the perfect

prediction consistently I think there's a certain hubris in that because we love our techniques but not all techniques are anyone protecting you our technique that we use can solve all our problems

or even predict consistently inaccurately every time I think the best we can hope for is an internally consistent method with our particular vision of astrology so whether you're

Hellenistic what are your medieval whether you're a hybrid however you come to put it together as long as you have some measure of internal consistency in terms of how you conceive of that I

think that's how we can best go forward in terms of thinking about prediction we also misperceive our biases our political biases can slant how we once

something to happen more than how it might actually happen so I must confess something I am a skeptic I came to astrology as a skeptic perhaps many of

you have as well but I'm also skeptic of mundane astrology meaning you know mundane astrologers who like to predict and one of the reasons why I am especially during election years that I

often can tell the bias of the astrologer now another Trump is definitely going to win or it's going to be Obama as it was 2012 so we have these political

investitures without acknowledging that we have these biases it's rare to see an astrologer go against his or her own political biases and not try to can

their astrology to fit their political bent so that is one other issue we as astrologers the natural question would be well why don't we have that same

issue and sometimes we do with our clients we have to sharpen our practice of non-attachment we're often better able to do this in personal consultations with clients because we might not have as much

personally at stake with how each person lives his or her life perhaps we find the myth of free will useful here in that sense well this person has their

free will and can go on their own way the last point I'd like to address what this is not thinking about how things appear in a broader context so I am on

the ESR board I was also part and parcel in helping to develop the prediction panel that we had in 2016 if you were at

our conference that story panel and one thing I would like to say about that is that perhaps we might have selected a diverse range of astrologers in

orientation and prediction because one thing people leave losing context in 2012 we had about five astrologers including one who's on the panel predict

accurately that Obama would win but in 2016 we have the same some of the same five astrologers who predicted that

Hilary would win and she didn't and I think what people lost sight of the fact of in terms of isaw itself is perhaps we could have had

a diverse range of people because a lot of people took that panel as proof positives that a struggle just can't predict where many astrologers did predict that Trump would win and that's

important to know so maybe we could have diversified or had someone who represented that point of view so that's another thing to consider we didn't think about the optics how these things

appear and how that affects astrology so that's something we need to think about as we talk about prediction and the public pursuit of a prediction so there's an encouragement for broadening

the voices that we hear in astrology because I do know at least two astrologers again and predict it in a panel that Trump could win and those voices were not perfect I believe that

the spirit for which we should strive is between entertaining possibilities and probability that means allowing for the possibility of that all that all the technique or freedom in the world

releases us from the ideas that we're looking at spectrum of probability those are not likely infinite but they're not usually as finite as an absolute answer

and we can release ourselves from absolutes thank you Justino your end

Bewdley I'm not ready after that I did say before I started I think all my thoughts are still going around the

baggage carousel last night I haven't honestly given this enough thought but the thought I've had is this on

first of all to straight answer the question is prediction killing astrology I totally agree with Sam it wouldn't matter how bad we were we're not gonna

kill astrology right it hasn't happened yet it's not gonna happen I don't like the word killing right are we pushing it underground I think sometimes we do that

right without really realizing that we're doing it but I really got into the thing about thinking about predictions

and I want to go back to the morning of

the can I take the time of that just project you know

okay I'm is that better yeah I want to go back to the morning of the 4th of May I had a neighbor who was unwell and she

had been the driver her husband didn't drive and so I said that I would take them to the hospital to see the specialist and to cut a long story short

when she came out he helped her into the car he then had to take a wheelchair back and she turned to me and it was clear that the news was not good and she

said he's predicted I've got two months now they hadn't been in the hospital for more than half an hour so that info and allowed the time to get from the car and

back to it so in the space of a few minutes she had been given this huge prediction but it's if that was the

beginning then of a fortnight where have done nothing but meet with people who predict is their job it I had occasion to have to speak to my

accountant about something who said I predict Christine if you don't do this X is gonna happen right that's their job I

also work in the world with musicians who will predict how good a performance is going to be by a student because we're just coming up to diploma time on

the grounds of how much rehearsal they've had how much practice whatever and it seems to me that they're an awful lot of professions aren't there who do

prediction that's their job right we do more navel-gazing about prediction than I think anybody else does because I think we are aware of the consequences

of getting it wrong right now frankly I'm not bothered about getting it wrong I know I've got a sized moon and I love it if I do get it right but actually

sometimes it's necessary to make the forecasts if I can use that word and learn that maybe you didn't quite read it correctly and frankly I would love to

happy in a room where we did an inquest about how we arrived at the conclusions that we did because that's how we learn right I actually don't want the client who doesn't want to come back because I

want to have had the experience of chatting with the client and I want to hear afterwards well you know how it how has it worked out that's really

meaningful now you probably know I work with finance and business and so I need to know what the expectation is of the person that probability is that they're

there because they're in the crisis right and in a sense all I am is a master or mistress of time right because I can look we can order you look at any

family so you can see one Saturn's gonna thank God move off right but and you can also see when other energies are going to come into play so I think really for

me it's all about well first of all a prediction for me is an educated assessment which doesn't is not the same as

that you're going to get it right I think we have a danger of being over Jupiter right because we kind of think we've got some special insight right and

I've been guilty of I'm sure we all have you're right when you're so crowing oh I knew that was going to happen to her that's so wrong right and I'm really glad that the cosmos does eventually you

know throw the custard pie in you're going you really haven't you really don't know it all I think we need to get out of the this habit of need to bite

and I think we have to learn how to cope with failure after we had the brexit vote in London I called it wrong but I knew it was going to be a shock result I

called it wrong I was really really upset I went out with a lawyer that I do a lot of work for I was sure I was going to be fired I mean I would have fired me there's no question I called it wrong

and he looked at me and he said you know in a court case somebody always has to lose which is true yeah get over it get up try again work out

why did you get it wrong right deal with it and I think really that's kind of for me this part of is prediction killing astrology no I don't think it is I hope

I'm not killing astrology and I would like to see us collectively endlessly upping our game take a look well hi everybody thanks for

being here um well you know I agree astrology if we haven't killed it yet it's not going anywhere so yeah I think we're safe as far as that goes

but for astrology to have a right to continue existing I think the bottom line is that we're helping people and not harming them that's a philosophical

point it's a value but it feels like solid ground to me when it comes to philosophies or interpretations of human

existence that that seemed conducive to to virtue and well-being the heart of the matter for me is the idea that we are responsible for our own lives the

choices we make matter effort matters self discipline matters love matters kindness matters and these are things we can choose to employ in life or we can

get out of the wrong side of the bed and so I come down very very strongly on the philosophical side of freewill fate versus free will is of course the

underlying paradigm question with with prediction you know if we can see the future there is no realm for freewill when I say if we can see the future

I mean rigidly you will get a divorce in 2019 you know for example that that kind of prediction issues in your marriage and 2019 that's a whole different beast

you know once we define the nature of the issues but you will get a divorce that kind of rigidity is absolutely logically inconsistent with freewill

and so for that philosophical reason I reject prediction when we define it in that narrow sense now of course basing an interpretation upon the universe upon

a philosophical premise is kind of dangerous it's the basis of all sorts of fundamentalism so I'm guilty of that fundamentalism I'm a free will fundamentalist guilty as

charged if anybody wants charge me but I want to make an even more fundamentally logical argument against rigid

prediction take for starters the astrological houses the twelve houses we take everything that could possibly

exist in the universe everything that has ever possibly exist stirred everything that might possibly exist in the future the whole enchilada and we

divide it into 12 boxes those are the twelve houses those are big boxes ditto with the planets little with the signs I don't

want to turn this into an astrology lesson nobody needs that but the point is that any possible combination of

astrological symbolism represents a an almost incomprehensible vast range of things that might happen there is no way

in a given lifetime given a four score in ten years in the world that any one person could possibly manifest all of those possibilities that are inherent in

the birth chart immediately as we think about this the whole idea of prediction begins to rest on very shaky ground how could I possibly take any configuration

of transit or progression a naval structure and and from that infinite is a dangerous work from that very large

spectrum of possibilities how could I conceivably guess which one was going to be right there just not enough words in the astrological vocabulary to

completely narrowly define all the possibilities in the university that's a logical argument against rigid

prediction I feel like what we can predict accurately is questions it is your fate that's it's not my

favorite word but I use it sometimes you know it is your fate to interact with certain highly definable archetypal

fields certain certain fields of probability and possibility I give me a chart of a baby you know one week old and another 75 years in the

future I can say what archetypal fields a possibility that kids going to be wrestling with I can predict that you know based on transits progressions solar arcs and so on and and all of that

is going to boil down to a set of questions and so that kid is going to face these questions you know in that moment of time answers I don't know I

don't know that's in the realm of free well so free fate versus free will I like to put them both in the blender and mix them up and call it astrology it is

your fate to face these questions I can predict them and then within the realm of my wisdom or the limits of my wisdom I suggest that certain answers to these

questions are going to be smarter than other answers are going to serve you better in the long run I can warn you about dome answers I can warn you about the slippery slope of self-serving

answers that hurt you in the long run that's human wisdom without which astrology is pretty much worthless you know for starters so I can use the symbols to understand the questions and

then I can counsel within that context but prediction here's what's going to happen I don't think so I don't think that's reliable at all and

the more consciously a person is engaged with his or her life the more true what I'm saying becomes the lazier a person

is the safer prediction is ilio eating potato chips and drinking beer in front of the television there's a distinct trees have woods to a cancer eating potato chips and drinking beer in front

you know if we're lazy inert and our lives prediction becomes a simpler task no we're left with you know with one one

angle-of-attack I think I'm what I'm saying it's it's the long history of successful predictions in astrology you know rigid accurate predictions have been made stupid wrong predictions have been made

and people don't like to talk about those so much but but accurate predictions are made and you know I'm thinking you know we can make sense of

that that with astrology and some degree of reason and common sense we can guess about probabilities like if we know for

example that here are two people who married before their 20th birthdays had

a baby right away and Uranus is heading for the the Venus of one of them there's going to be you know some issues in the relationship in that time and for us to

speculate that this might mean the end of this relationship that was on a shaky basis is not unreasonable when it comes to guessing what will happen I think

we're probably going to be right with that prediction question I would leave us with though is are we being helpful

with that prediction you know your marriage is doomed hey I was right educated guess it's not unreasonable in

this situation though I would much rather discuss the issues than the ways that this relationship could maybe mature and evolved and survive in the

back of my head I'm guessing it probably won't happen I have no business saying that I have no business making that prediction now I do personal astrology

personal growth individual client work you know that's my orientation when it comes to predicting what the economy will do you know the it's an educated guess is

interacting with astrology we are able to to speculate probabilistically and we'll be right perhaps more often than then we're wrong but the bottom line I

think we really have to defend the moral and philosophical basis of our craft and and in doing that we really need to turn our back on the whole idea that we concede the future it's false

advertising we're wrong so often whenever we're wrong as in you know the last presidential election were the dominant predictions you know were for

Hillary among us tralala Jers we forgive all that but it didn't do us any good from a public relations angle you know whenever an astrologer makes a loud

prediction that turns out wrong it gets in the newspapers you know and we're we're not going to kill the field but we're not going to help us with those kinds of errors so let's effort us what we really can do

and do well predicting the questions but leaving the answers up to the individual [Music]

thank you very much all right can you hear me you know I would like to take and look at this from three different

perspectives number one I do a lot of mundane not predictions but assessing global hot spots how will I go if an

earthquake is going to happen there but I can suggest that there is an interview force that is strong enough that if the energy is ready to give it will give but

it needs a certain amount of influence in order to be able to do so so I'd like to talk a bit more about mundane astrology in predictions and whether or

not that's killing astrology I would like to also take it from a personal point of view the work we do with clients in our consulting room and I think there's been a vast change going

on in that area and I would like to address that a little bit as I proceed along my very little path and then there

is the situation of trying to predict who is going to win an election you have a 50/50 chance of being right and a 50/50 chance of being wrong I think it

is a great exercise for astrology to do that for astrologers but to do it in a public situation or a situation where we

invite a press to come in and watch the process and we get half of the people wrong and half of the people right how many of these people are going to say astrology doesn't know what it's doing

because half of them say one thing on the other half say the other so I think that that is kind of a folly kind of a

position to be in so I would like to go back to at least a couple of those issues and hopefully that the gone won't

be given to me I got seven more minutes I have seven

more minutes I need 15 I need 25 we can all talk about these things for many more minutes anyway down to business in

in my astrology work I'd like to trace the process that I kind of went through some of you know that I've been doing this for many many many many years you

know I'm getting a little gray on the edges and I haven't been doing it for so long I have seen a change in astrology

when I first got into astrology the books that I was reading lens one more towards predictive work with a client this is going to happen that's going to

happen or answering questions that a client would come in those were the kinds of literature's or books or

learning that we were doing back then but as we have been bugging them on our perspective path we have discovered

something and particularly an ESR we have discovered that there is a way to approach a chart without being

specifically explicit to a client that this is what's going to happen and next week you're going to have your appendix operation and all of these kinds of

things but what kind of service can we provide to a client rather than trying to say what is going to happen to them next week next month or next year

instead of what is going to happen to them and it's our we have a program of consulting skills that has helped us to

work with a client with the issues of a client and at what a client is going through at any particular time and to

help the astrologer and the client to meet together and one specific moment in time so that the astronomer astrologer

understands the issue of the client and the client under snow that the astrologer is in tune with them and in

that kind of a situation we can help the client come to the realization of many of the issues that are coming forward in

their life so I have been changing my astrology appropriately as I have seen astrology changing and as I have seen

the expectations of our clients changing and part of that is due to the approach that we make in the work that we are

doing all right that was one area that I wanted to talk about the other one has to do with mundane astrology I enjoy

immensely looking at what's going on around the world and but rather than as I said at the very beginning of my talk trying to predict that he particularly

event was going to happen at a particular time I like to look at what's going on across the world I like to look at what's going on above me and bring

that down on the planet Earth and then I would like to say that there are certain global hot spots what is a global hot

spot if I saw a particular energy coming into a particulars owned on planet earth and it was in the middle of Saskatchewan I'm a Canadian the middle of

Saskatchewan where there isn't a mountain I wouldn't predict a volcanic eruption there's no time tonic plate there and I

would not predict an earthquake or I would not I would not even call out a

hot spot from that perspective so if we are going to try to assess what is happening in a particular area we look

at the amount of influences coming down and what area of the globe it is going to happen out and then we say what is the likely possibility of a particular

kind of event in a particular area if it's on a tectonic plate line there could be an earthquake well the county could run well of course that's obvious

to isn't it but it might be a political development that might be ready to erupt we look at what the range of possibility

is in a certain area and then we can make a forecast I have got I have developed a complete aversion to that

word prediction for anybody that believes in that today I'm sorry I apologize but it bothers me it bothers

me tremendously because I don't like to be wrong I do know that occasionally I

am but I would much prefer to be correct okay so I've addressed the point about

the global hotspot idea and that's an area that I enjoy very much working in working with now the other idea I

perhaps have covered it but I want to zero in on it a little bit more and that is when we make these political predictions and as I said earlier a

50/50 chance of being right a 50/50 chance of being wrong and also why don't we do this as exercises for ourselves it's a wonderful exercise trying to

figure out who is going to win an election what is the bet what's an approach what works and what doesn't work we could do this it within

the confines of our own discipline but we don't have to invite the press to come in we don't have to invite other

people to come in and observe until we get it right until we learn how to do it more appropriately so anyway those are

the things that I wanted to say I like the idea that astrology can be enormous ly benefit benefit benefit in so many

different areas of our lives and our being and our functioning as long as we do it with some degree of caution and care and discretion

so dem are my words just as a matter of interest and Steven will attest to this because I've begun sending him copies

I would like my attorney will be speaking to you and I've already contacted Facebook about it but every

time I post a picture this is true every time I post a picture of me and I put it on Facebook it comes up would you like the tag

Steven forest I'm so much taller how's the air up there or lack of okay

getting serious here for a minute I was thinking about the panel earlier and thinking where people might fall on it

and I had myself actually I want to say left of center but it's not political right left with Stephen maybe being more extreme but after hearing him I think

I'm the more extreme and and and I and I would agree with with with what Chris said to some extent and it's not that I

take offense with something I don't like the word prediction it's that I think it has more to do with with questions and

answers and and and here's the short version of it and and I think it comes back to the question of why the hell do we do this why do we do astrology I

think if you got into the Wayback Machine and asked the group of astrologers why they did astrology they would say they did it to predict the

future I do not do astrology to predict the future I did this this is me personal personally I remember reading

that Bucky fuller for 50 years of his life would reconsider every few day days his version of the Lord's Prayer and and he rewrote it constantly and I

constantly think about why do I see clients and in my top 10 reasons of why I see clients predicting their future is not one of them so what is what is it

that I do there's a wonderful quote or is it's a very short short poem that I think I can get to hear mine my iPad is gonna be

happy with me sometimes it is and sometimes I get messed up but it's a it's a short poem by samuel taylor

coleridge and it goes like this and i have this over my desk so it's amazing I can never memberid wait what but it's over my desk

and the poem goes like this what if you slept and what if in your sleep you dreamed and what if in your

dream you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower and what if when you awoke you held that

flower in your hand what then every client I see my goal is singular is to send them out of my office or off the

phone or off Skype with a flower that's impossible because it's they're working and interaction with that flower after they leave my presence I'm not a

counseling psychologist I don't want to sit with you through all your crap you got a you got a counselor to do that it's not that I don't have a good year if I need it you know but my job is is

is catalytic at least that's how I I see how I see my work now so I can find my

notes again somewhere here there we go or not

okay I'm using up my valuable time three

che so when I when I see someone they go oh you're an astrology that you can't really see the future can you my answer

is very simple to use a calendar if you use a calendar you're predicting the future you know I mean it's it's a prediction to say that Christmas will

occur on the 25th of December no I'm not being I'm being very this is important stuff to consider because we use language and then we forget predict

simply means to say before and quite frankly I think prediction in astrology is important but it's what we say and I think several people hit it on the nail if I predict that you're gonna have a

flat tire on your front left tire in three weeks who cares you go out and buy new tires you're gonna still get the

flat tire you know my goal is working with a client so that they can impact their own future and and so here we come

to a couple of very important things first of all I think in astrology as important as prediction is I and I have

a cancer moon I think post diction is just as important because when I'm working with a new client I will probably spend half the session I'm not

someone who you can't pay me money to look at your chart for one year ahead I think that's a bunch of crap I think it's largely useless it has no value

because a year ahead is not separate from the year behind them the year behind that and the year behind that and the decade behind that and a lifetime

behind that we live in a continuum so as an astrologer my job is not to just predict the future it's to position the client in the world in that magical

garden where they can have a flower that they take out okay so prediction I like the word expectation someone used

that because because expectations is largely the number one downfall of any relationship is is as incorrect

expectations which really means that one or the other person predicted the future wrong based upon their assumptions of what someone else was or was not going

to do I look at astrology not as a system of prediction but as a mapping system rather just like you would use

your GPS to drive from here to Phoenix Arizona you would use a TPS a temporal positioning system in order to not to figure out where you going but to figure

out when you're going see I don't know what's gonna happen to you when Saturn conjuncts your moon but I know when Saturn is conjunct eating good gonna conjunct your move by transit and as

your astrologer my job is to help you understand by post diction what that cycle of Saturn and the moon is in your chart so that you can work toward making something happen

here's what happens there here's a part of the problem and it's this illusion that we come from that we live in an objective world and that a client who comes to see you is unchanged when a

client comes to see an astrologer you have altered their trajectory you're making a prediction about their future you're actually imposing your crap unto

them and this can be very empowering but not if you coming from a place of fear we don't need that you know this whole idea of coming from fear rather than

from love it's a whole other topic here but I want to stay on track as I got a few other points that I need to make in

the next three minutes I would have said not I would rather be meaningful than write what I actually said many times is

I would rather be useful than right and maybe meaningful as part of that I think that astrology share something very basic with classical

physics modern Western medicine and fundamental religions and what we share with them is we think we know more than we do this is heresy for an astrologer to say

I would have no problem with predictions if we were always right but we're not and then we do more damage than we do good all right so in a quantum universe

and there is no such thing as separate observer if you go to see the Delphic Oracle your life has changed when someone makes a prediction an astrologer

they are delivering a very very very high potency can you clear that off I have they are delivering a very high

potency homeopathic remedy and the remedy is this if I'd say something that is symbolically correct you have Saturn coming to conjunct your moon you're going to get divorced it

doesn't matter what you say think consciously the image goes into the subconscious and starts doing its work and then for the next year or two or

three the events that happen get framed in a certain context that then manifests as my prediction I was right no I wasn't

right I actually co-created the event a good astrologer will not predict in the divorce a good astrologer will help a client create meaning in their relationship and then get to choose

whether divorce or it may or may not be a valuable outcome I have much more to say

you guys calibrate over synchronize

synchronize so nine minutes I'll restart

I'm sorry there we go all right all right so I wanted to start by saying something that's half controversial and half not which is that the title of this panel I think is stupid

yeah we all drink every most astrologers I've mentioned the title of this panel to have said why is it title of that or what is that with the inflammatory title

and part of the reason that astrologers have that immediate gut level reaction I think personally is because one of the fundamental problems is that astrology

is inherently predicted so that's true whether you're a predictive astrologer a psychological astrologer or horror astrologer whatever type of astrology are doing astrology is fundamentally predictive and part of the reason for

that is even if you're just doing naval astrology you're just doing psychological astrology the fundamental premise of what you're doing is that the alignment of the planets at the moment that a person was born has something to

say about their future whether it's their psychological characteristics their appearance their relationships or what-have-you you're making the assumption that the alignment to the planets at the personal point at the the moment a person was

born will have something to say about five or ten or twenty or thirty years in their future or however long that means astrology is inherently predictive therefore I've come to the conclusion

that the title of this panel is stupid because you could rephrase it and say is astrology killing astrology and it becomes a sort of pointless question so

the question then if astrology isn't is inherently predictive than the other question that has been raised is is astrology morally or philosophically wrong

so some astrologers and one of the points I feel like you're going towards Stephen was that there's something wrong about prediction or wrong about the concept of fate in it

of itself and that free will is always positive and fate is always bad and it's always set up as this dichotomy between the two but I don't necessarily agree

with that dichotomy that a prediction is bad and fate is always bad and to attempt to do that is somehow morally wrong I think there's actually something

valuable and and Noble about the process of making the attempt even if you failed sometimes sometimes spectacularly like I did and the other panelists did in 2016

that was a humbling experience for me and one that I didn't necessarily appreciate at the time but on some level you know I needed to have in the community needed to have one of the

reasons we needed to have it is because the point of that panel was not astrological research even though the title of Tsar is the International Society for astrological research there

was little to nothing to do with research on that panel it was almost entirely about creating a spectacle and courting the media and the media were in were invited in order to witness this

panel and witness the predictive power of the astrologers rather than come and look at the astrologers with their many different takes because there was astrologers of all different backgrounds on those panels who were using different

techniques and different approaches in order to attempt to infer what the outcome of the election would be but the panel was actually so poorly organized

that we got very little time to actually talk about any of that in the two weeks in the run-up to the panel these are announced to us that they had been found the birth time for Hillary Clinton but

they weren't gonna release it to the public or to the panel until the day of the panel which left all of us panelists initially kind of screwed because Easter was telling us they had the birth time

but they weren't going to give it to us until it was too late to figure out what to do with it eventually we sort of protested and there was going to be a walkout of the panelists and eventually they were lent

it and gave us the birth time and after a two-week ordeal it turned out that the birth time was fake so the biggest publicity actually that the ESR panel got was not that all the

astrologers were wrong it was a Washington Post article that said there was an East our panelists who came up with a birth time for Hillary Clinton or claim to and then it turned out that he lied and he retracted the birth time

that was the most publicity that they use our panel got so one of the reasons I'm bringing this up is because I'm almost kind of offended that we're talking about that that we're doing

another spectacle so we're using another inflammatory title to say is prediction killing astrology that's being hosted by ESR when ESR was the one that originally hosted the panel to do these types of

predictions and I kind of suspect will do so again in 2020 so one of the questions if we all agree that maybe we shouldn't analyze the approaches and the

different traditions that are being used more rather than focus on the spectacle recording the media then maybe we need to change the way that we do astrology

publicly I think that's one of the things that people have come back to a few times here which is that what is the purpose of doing that are we doing that in order to compare different approaches

to astrology and in order to demonstrate different techniques that show probabilistic outcomes or are we just trying to impress the public to convince

them of some sort of astrological powers that we have so most astrologers know that astrology is probabilistic or that you make you in fruit and infer outcomes

based on your techniques but the public may not know that and that's one of the things I think that you were saying Steven that's harmful or that you feel is harmful when people make those

predictions so it's true that astrology is archetypal II predictive but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should only make non falsifiable statements so

that's one of the points that I would like to make it's true that you know there's many there's a specific placement in the birth chart and there's many different possible outcomes but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't

attempt to make any statement about that placement and to the extent that you make any statement even an archetypal one that's still a type of prediction based on the person's birth

based on those placements you're still involving predictions you're just doing qualified predictions and that brings me to one of my final points which is the

idea of forecasting a forecast is just a qualified prediction it's a prediction where you qualify it by staying saying based on this data such-and-such seems

the most likely outcome so even using forecasts is a sort of euphemism and that was actually the title of the last Easter conference was something like the power of forecasting I believe right so

one of the things I think we need to do as a community is be more honest stop using euphemisms or if you're going to use a youth emisn like forecasting and try to set that up as being somehow the

opposite of prediction be honest that you're still actually basically engaging in prediction you're just doing it in a more careful and realistic and honest way by saying that you don't necessarily

you don't have a crystal ball that shows you exactly what's going to happen in the future you have a set of data that you're trying to infer information from and there's nothing wrong with that and

if you do that then there's something valuable about prediction so let's see the last point that I wanted to make is

just that aside from not focusing as much on yeah I don't think it's morally or philosophically wrong one of the things I want to say is Rick you

mentioned the flower that's impossible and that's the thing that you want to pull out of a consultation for many people but for most astrologers and I believe for most clients the flower that

is impossible that you use sort of as you said pick in the dream and then you wake up and it's still there that is prediction I mean the thing that is impressive to most clients and that is this moving and compelling about

astrology is that it could have any predictive power at all because it shouldn't astrology shouldn't work and I think if we we stay in this community long enough we forget that but if you step outside

of the community for just five minutes you remember that astrology is an incredibly weird incredibly strange thing that shouldn't work but for some reason it does and one of the only reasons that we know that

does is because it has that predictive capability were a chart cast for me for 33 years ago in my life could tell me something about what's happening today that means astrology has predictive

power and there's something incredibly valuable and powerful about that and instead of rejecting that I think we need to embrace it we should do so carefully and honestly and we should

merge it with the modern counseling insights and other things like that but we shouldn't make like client considerations about how consultations

should take place let that overrule the actual philosophical concerns and the underlying truth that the underlying truth and astrology is inherently predictive

before we get to the three questions and I'm going to say that even a topic with

a dumb name alright can still get very very inspirational an intelligent commentary

from astrologers so let's give them a

hand and I want to say one more thing which is this and this is just my quick

little input on this I agree with Chris that it would be wonderful to see when we do these prediction panels to see a

more intelligent discussion about the situation in other words to analyze the potential behavior of this candidate or

this candidate what that might mean for example so we're so we are actually revealing the intelligence of astrology

in that sense and to be able to show as Chris was talking about the different techniques and how they've arrived at these techniques as well I think for us this astrologist that's interesting and

for the media it shows the media something different than just win lose win lose it gets the media involved in an intelligent discussion and they can

say look these astrologers are making points here that are just as good if not better than all these political pundits who are out here chatting chatting chatting so to me you know that becomes

a very interesting thing for us to get there so I just wanted to throw that in as well all right thank you all right now we have three questions for the panelists I'm going to start it start

over here I'm your company my goal is the same all right okay there we go you're going to sit

here he actually predicted earlier than the second round up started all right so here's question number one and you'll

each have two minutes to respond to this question here we go when discussing trends with your client

do you seek input from your client regarding their own plans goals and intentions regarding the future or do

you do you believe that the forecasts you offer is irrespective of the

client's plans goals and intentions you could stand up here like I don't care okay yes so I mean I think I don't want to be

your harsh but again I think that's a dumb question because I don't know all Jews who would answer that in the negative are there any astrologers that wouldn't take their clients background

or context or life into account yes there are several many and I would only say this out loud because I've heard this person say this in front of her room this large Alfie

lavoy well but he's an astrologer and and his point is that I don't want to be distracted by their input III have a chart and I'm reading it I'm just not

taking that point Alfie would those stand out as being extraordinarily unique in that regard would because I think most consulting astrologers do take the background of their client in the context of their life because each

astrologer knows that the chart casts for one person could be a chart cast for like a dog who was born at the same moment in the context of that dog's life and his chart spectacular as it may be

is going to be different in it in different ways than the chart for a human or the chart for you your client so you've already got to always gotta look at the context for the chart and understand it does that answer the

question or I think it's a great answer

okay all right that same question yes

yes yes yes no I don't know when I'm sitting with a client what I do say is

something like this we only have an hour together you and I there are many things that I will say that could inspire you

to talk for hours that's what your psychologist or your therapist is for I want to know but you need to know that for me to do my job

I want that feedback from you but at some point in time I'm gonna say I got it let's go on I'm an Aries I can do like that it doesn't it doesn't mean that I'm not interested it doesn't

mean that I don't care it also doesn't mean that it's not incredibly valuable it's just there's a trade-off here because there are therapeutic relationships that a client would have

where they spend an hour a week for years talking about their stuff that's not my job and so as much as I do want

that feedback I also want the control in this session to limit it so that I can also share what it is that they're expecting me to share

hmm is that your final answer I'm a one-word woman not really we have

two approaches we can sit there and be information orientated astrologer who sits there and looks at the chart and thinks that we know everything that the

client is going to once or is and we don't we are looking at a piece of paper and the person in front of us is a real live person so I think that it's

important to understand and to be on the same I mentioned this before Esau has a consulting skills program that allows us to get integrate to integrate with the

client so that we're both at the same place at the same instance in the same situation so I think that it's enormous

ly important to to be there with the client and not sit there with a piece of paper and spiel off a whole bunch of

information thank you all right well the first part of the question you're pretty obvious I do invite input

from my clients obviously a single mother working as a waitress with four children is going to face a different opportunity space than you know somebody

single and born wealthy and all of this so that kind of input really helps me ground my predictions of questions and

in concrete terms and I think it's more helpful for the client to me that seems fairly self-evident and obvious here's where I'll throw a little more

complication into it I I do not presume that my client should trust me that is up to the client and so if a client

wants to come and sit with me and go like this tell me what you've got that's not my my happiest situation but I honor their right to not trust me and

then I will say I will speak to you pure Lee from the symbols it will be more abstract of course it will be more developmental but I I honor the fact

that in this intimate counseling situation it is my task to win your trust rather than to presumptuously assume that of course you're going to tell me all your secrets before I start

so that that's the one little wild card that we're throw into the mix thank you how do you win their trust how do you win their trust or what is it in that process that eventually causes them to

open up can you Katie can you hold that question till there's a chance you'll have a chance to write it down you'll

have a chance to ask them I'll remember

it okay so I should okay please

Christine absolutely I mean can I just agree completely with Ray we're going to have a very short time with the client

most of the time there's an exchange of money involved in this as well so they're investing time and money they want to hear what I've got to say but I can't say anything intelligent if we

don't but she agreed an agenda beforehand of what can reasonably be covered in an hour or 90 minutes um frankly I prefer to have quite a bit of

discussion before they're even there so that we know exactly what we're going to achieve in that time I also know and this is just this is me I tend to go to

sleep afterwards and then think of something I wish I'd said equally I but I now say that to them I know this is gonna happen equally I know that you're

gonna go to bed tonight and think I wish I'd asked her about X so can we agree that this is going to be followed up within seven days so that we both clear

this up so that we're both of us content with with what we've done but absolutely I'm listening to where they're coming from I need to know particularly the kind of work that

I do I need to know where they're actually at and I also need to explore I hope this is a kind of a shade of your flower thing is is sharing their vision

with them because I love the idea that people leave feeling better than when they came in thank you know again there's an expression of my chart as well but I think even if somebody is in

the middle of something horrible turmoil we are the masters and mistresses of time we know when this stuff is gonna move on and take it somewhere else as usual

can I borrow that line I guess this might get to those in the back now you can see me hurt me before

um you know I'm the other kind of Scorpio on the other end with the black jacket now to say this I actually disagree with Chris I don't think this is a dumb question because I think it

reflects a change and how astrology is developed because in that first guy into astrology when you got a reading some with mics in your recording so you just gotta you know send in your information

and just got a recording that we don't do that as much anymore but that's some way in which some people actually do readings or consultations so I think the key question is are we Co facilitating a

process with our clients and I think like you said Steven it depends on your clients right how open they are I think that's something to take into consideration I always go in with the

aspiration that we're going to have a conversation that's part of the consultation but sometimes you may have a client comes in who wants to talk about your dog I just got a puppy right

I got a puppy and they have a moon Pluto transit right now so it's like do you really want to spend the money and the time to talk to me about your puppy and

the conversation really isn't about the puppies so that's something to consider or me yet maybe it's a pitbull I really so I mean that's kind of the

conversation we can have how it goes into a deeper moment but I think sometimes you may have to go in knowing that the client may not know what he or she wants and we have to kind of guide

some aspect of the conversation until we get to a proper place all right never get a good question -

and maybe we'll start we'll go from this side okay okay question to Monday Monday in astrology is concerned with

forecasting about events in the world are you

comfortable in making public predictions if so why if not why so I am most

skeptical about mundane astrology and so I'm gonna go into some my crimes why I mentioned earlier sometimes it's the biases of the astrologer blown into

public release and other times I find that mundane astrologers often talk about things that if you didn't really sit down or if you just did sit down and think about it you can come up on your

own like yeah well you know I think for instance you know Trump is gonna make a gaffe next week okay he's gonna have

some problems in his administration okay so I I actually would love to see mundane astrologers held to a higher standard do better do more take more

risks if you're gonna take the risks but stop me stopping mealy-mouthed about like talking about things as if you're fastening something that's deep and profound that couldn't be reasons by

sense or probability or logic so and I'm saying that as a skeptic someone who knows astrology because I often will see astrologers do that and often another thing that astrologers will do and that

take responsibility when they're wrong you know there's an astrologer who's been predicting an economic downturn for 10 years and those who know me on Facebook you see me engage this

particular person but I don't think we do that enough hope these are they're responsible like you're saying such-and-such well is that true so I

think in terms of whether I do mundane or public predictions I will do it if for instance there's something I think we can glean from astrology that's

unusual or insightful but otherwise I

question the purpose oh dear I think I am i comfortable doing it no I'm not but

am I gonna continue doing it yes it's the nature of I work with a lot of business people they trade across the world they want my opinion on what I

think particular countries are headed and whether or not is a good idea trading in certain ways yes I've got a reasonable record they wouldn't come back I mean that that's the fact they

wouldn't come back if what I was saying wasn't helpful to them and that's the bottom line but does am i comfortable doing it no I'm not and part of that is

that there is you know really we should worship the ground that Nick Campion walks on you know because he is you know a wonderful data collector but we all

have to do that more and we should be sharing more data because the number of times that my problem is I haven't got the up-to-date thing I want to know who

said what when right I don't know if you noticed but you know from the minute that I came in today and as I've been greeting people I've actually been taking the time that I met because I want I want to hear the

meaning of it but we need to be bettered you know sorry this is I'm preaching on others and to the converted but actually our data collection is not good enough and I would be more comfortable in my

job if I had better access to that material thank you well Monday mr. ology isn't my main area but like most of us have pulled into it

quite a lot and not comfortable making public predictions in the rigid sense I am fine predicting questions I once at

1975 or so in the pages of the magazine called the Sun I predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union and everybody said

that's not going to happen you know I wish I weren't so proud of that and say no way I think I got lucky and

demonstrated bad astrology by assuming that there was a future out there that already existed and I had the crystal ball and I couldn't foresee it um gusts to minutes and it's a big lecture

here America's mid haven't progressed into Gemini run around inauguration day America faced a question you know okay

so we elected you know or something like that Trump with his jim minionese the question as I would put it so America's Dharma on the planet our mission on the

planet if we get it right we become a beacon of open-mindedness of Education of tolerance of of research of curiosity all the high dominion things but if you

get Gemini wrong we're flaky we're distracted we're running around in 17 directions at once and nobody on the planet knows what the heck we're doing okay we know it

happened but my role is an astrologer I think is to cast a light on what should have happened and what can still happen that's the spirit I like to bring to this work

Chris well as I've already said you know that I do do mundane astrology in the early days that I was talking about

before about the kind of astrology that we were that we were learning more I've had more to do with predicting I would go on television every New Year's because I was in the broadcast industry

but all my friends in the broadcast industry knew that I was studying astrology so they were throwing me out and say can we do a New Year's presentation on what's going to happen the upcoming year and so on and and

political predictions in my ordinary and so on and it was kind of good fun but that was in those days and you know that I've changed my attitude and I've

changed my way of doing this and right now what I would prefer to do some of you may know I work with of geodetic world map and I look at global hot spots

as I said earlier but what I would rather do is is look at these events study these events write articles write

the book on on on how to look at the world from a mundane point of view and discuss it among astrologers among ourselves to see if we can find better

ways and more predictable perhaps methods of determining where things are going so I'd like it as an academic

study but I prefer now not to go on television anymore to make wild predictions and so I don't do that anymore but I do enjoy it as an academic

study and a discussion among ourselves or our lecture I might give on where I've been learning and working with so

great I think mundane astrology is incredibly important but I also don't

necessarily believe it's important in a specifically in a specifically predictive manner I believe it's

important in a multivalent archetypal manner now many of you may know that for about eight years Jeff Gower and I

co-authored a book for Barnes & Noble called your astrology guide and in every one of those we had a section non I mean it was a Sun sign oriented book but

there was a fairly substantial section on what's happening you know next year and some of our predictions were very right on and others were very stupidly

not right on yeah that's not for me though the highest use of mundane astrology one of my lectures

here at uaq is on the what I call waltz time for civilization three times the century one two three

Saturn and Pluto aligned and and by looking again not just prediction and I just trying to touch back on something Chris said because I agreed with him but

he only said half the equation then that is how important for diction is and although I'm I talk a hard act against it I totally agree it's it's it's an odd

thing but I don't think that prediction is any more important than post diction when when working with time now just

make these points real quickly so for years I've been talking to my clients to

my audience to my readers to anyone who listened that come 2010 to 2020 we're

gonna see a replay and a twist of what happened in the 60s duh why this is mundane astrology because Uranus and Pluto aligned in the 60s then Uranus and

Pluto squaring now we look at the cycles of these planets this is different than Nick Campion's awesome work in doing actual predictions you know based upon

the birth time of a city or a nation I think this is important stuff I think it's more complicated than being reduced off into a single chart but I think that

we what we it's important that we do Monday in astrology but what about Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday

oh very quickly seriously one of the most important books that I read as I was studying psychology and learning

astrology was a book by Norman o Brown called love's body which was a look at historical development in respect to

Freudian psychoanalysis and that in a way was mundane astrology for us that was they taking the individual human

individual to to humanity ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny the history of the individual recapitulates the species

the history of the culture is also tied into that it's part of the holographic thing sorry for going over things right

okay so the question is mundane astrology is concerned with forecasting about events in the world are you comfortable making public predictions so

part of my my answer is is made I'm not a mundane astrologer and I think only half of the panelists here do Monday in astrology I think me and Steven and Sam are primarily natal astrology so that's

our primary specialty and in fact most astrologers around the world are primarily naval astrologers so there's a bit of a contradiction it doesn't ask are you comfortable making public

predictions you don't have to be a Monday an astrologer to make public predictions or to make any predictions because there's different branches in astrology there's at least four major branches and all of them do predictions

from different standpoints so you have natal astrology making prediction based on birth charts you have election astrology making predictions based on inception charts new query astrology

making predictions based on the charts of questions so even though I'm not a mundane astrologer I am comfortable making public predictions but I only do so very carefully and with great

trepidation and I think most people should approach it with that in mind because of the issue that Steven raised which is the potential harm that can come when you make an incorrect

prediction so one of the things that isn't legitimate community issues that astrologers too often fall into the trap of almost being too comfortable issuing public statements and making public

predictions without having sufficient data as in the case of the last election where a lot of us were using different birth times for Hillary Clinton or sometimes without actually researching

the subjects too extensively you know with the advent of blogs and websites everybody can issue a prediction every other astrologers writing articles and

statements you know every other day at this point so maybe to take this back to the actual point of this panel maybe there is a community issue in terms of

how relaxed astrologers are in some instances about making public predictions and perhaps we should only make them with greater trepidation or be more careful in the process and that's

one of the things I think I learned from that panel what 1 or 2 years ago but I don't think that we should not make predictions if that's part of the

implied question because there may still be something there value in terms of the almost scientific process of trial and error and refining our craft by continually putting ourself out there

and if you've never put yourself out there to make the prediction then it doesn't quite matter as much if you just whisper to yourself yeah I got it right

thank you very much I think the question was also about comfort about the comfort zone that you have about making public predictions and that was a good response

to that definitely all right we have question three I'll read the question and we'll start with Sam all right okay

some astrologers define astrology as primarily divination some even go so far

as to say they are reading the mind of God or reading the cosmic mind what is your opinion about astrology as

divination and do you use astrology in this way such as with horror area charts for

example well I gave up trying to speak for God when I left the ministry I I

don't have that aspiration but I definitely can relate to the question because in one of my debates with a mundane astrologer via my blog he he

actually wrote on my blog he said well you know maybe you just don't know how to do mundane astrology because when you do it you do it right you can read the

mind of God and that's stuck with me you know both there's no sense like oh this man is crazy but on another level it made me think that I wonder if there are

other astrologers who believe this and I think there are and I think that you know Chris used the word trepidation that gives me immense trepidation not

because of my former occupation but more so and also because of the idea that we we don't we just talked about this we don't have this left we have this lack of clarity about probability and

possibility fate versus free will so how dare we how can we know that for certain but I do think we can do is step into the mystery acknowledge it as mystery and come out with some signs

some sense of what it might mean whether that's by probability or by some means of feeling certain along a certain spectrum but no I don't believe that we

can you know I mean the roots of a struggle he's definitely divination but I don't think we can know that the body mind thank you very much Christine

I almost want to say that the questions too hard I can't answer it um I think it's really difficult this I'm trying to

work out what happens when I actually look at a chart and I've always felt I've come from a musical background and I've always felt that I hear the chart

before anything else I kind of there's a certain rhythm to it and the sound to it and usually within the first couple of

minutes you can tell somebody and then let me give you an example this this gentleman came for it for a reading and he was very happen to be very tall I when he sat down in the chair he was he

was a bit like this and he came from that uranus-pluto mop you know they the middle sixties and and I started to talk about how rare this group were and how

that particular alignment you know you have to go back several thousand years to find an exact one whatever and I started to talk about them as though they were being like gods from another

time or whatever and as I was speaking the guy his back went straight so no it was like it was really it was the most amazing moment rent and and I felt at that moment that there's something

really special was happening now don't think it was anything to do with me whatsoever I think it was something that was the magic in the moment which I think both Rick and Steve you've both

you I think something does happen and it happens through us but it isn't actually us and I think they're really the two things that are key I want to pick up on a word you used earlier is that we have

to be kind first and the other thing is that there's a consequence for everything that we say right and I'm I don't know

about you but I'm acutely aware of that and it started to become more acute at the point where we started to record the consultations because you realize somebody's might be listening to this in

five or 10 years time you know it's so there's there's more pressure now before I know so I'm not actually going off promise here I don't I just think something magical happens I don't know

if it's divine I don't know what it is but something special does happen within this thank you very much okay I want to

thank the brilliant author of these questions I don't know but I'm changing my business card

I can read God's wine something I think this is be a bad idea the language is so pretentious

obviously if we claim to know God's mind or arrogant you know to the nth degree but I think that's what we're trying to do I think I think that's the bottom

line essence of astrology it's guiding us this is the will of God for us it reveals Dharma reveals of the unfolding

of your spiritual journey or psychological journey the chart on astrology does reveal God's will or the divine well for each one of us language

will vary but you know this transcendent idea III bow to that and it's our task to try

to do this impossible thing and to do it as well as we can do I have 40 seconds yeah you got one minute all right

there's a horror I I do I do a little bit of horror mostly I'm too busy with my clients and look too far ahead to to do with horror questions but one time I

my cat who used to go outside lost its collar and where's the collar because we haven't replaced this thing so I set up an aura char oh it's in the it's in the

West it's outside the house it's down low and it's wet ah we have a drainage ditch that runs you know north-south that side of the property I walk out

there confidently you know reached out it's not there a few days later I found it west side of the house on the deck

the cat had tried to drink out of a glass and somehow gotten head stuck and the collar was sitting in a glass let him rest excited ass down in some some

water it was what horror who was right but I was wrong I'm looking at this word emanations and

I'm wondering divination does it mean if divine is astrology divine is it divinely inspired or when we are working

with a client are we getting some kind of special inspiration in knowing the right thing to say from this piece of paper that we're looking at and this

client that we're dealing with it makes me wonder or it made me wonder as I read this and I think that there is something

to that in a way that I don't think that I am just looking at a chart and deciphering symbols on the chart as much

as I think over time I develop some kind of a perception on what is an appropriate thing to say at the right

time so would that be a divine perception would that be a form of divination it's a question that I put to

myself as I read this now the other part of the question is I do new horror astrology and I do election or astrology

and I've often said that horror astrology is the divination form of astrology because that there is something rather special about horror II

isn't there how on earth does it work a client gives up life gives you a question you look at a chart and you can see so much in there pertinent to that

particular moment and that question and that seems really quite mysterious to me and but this other part reading the mind of God

I have enough trouble reading my own all right so I absolutely have a I absolutely believe that we can use

astrology to read the mind of God except it's in Klingon Albert Einstein said I

want to know the mind of God the rest are details up until the time of Johannes Kepler the divine proportion

was everything above the earth the heavens were considered to be the divine proportion Kepler's great heresy was that he was able to formulate using

human intellect that which was in the divine and this was an astounding development in human consciousness astrology is about reading the divine

proportion it's about reading the mind of God it doesn't mean that God has an

answer God may be just as confused as we are doesn't know he she it they don't know whether Schrodinger's cat is dead

or alive no this is important stuff so yes we can read the mind of God and what Christine said I look at I mean to me

astrology is music of the spheres the Pythagorean and Keplerian concept of the music of the spheres was not an extrapolation it's not a metaphor I think of this wonderful book I never

metaphor I didn't like but that's something else by Marty Marty grody it's

a great book but but the planets are ultra ultra low frequency harmonies

instead of beating at 440 cycles a second a below middle C you instead of that it's planet to beating at three

cycles a century he's had four cycles a millennium Pluto 13 cycles a year this is music we just can't hear it we dance to it we live it we breathe it but we

doesn't come through the years and so I absolutely agree with you when I look at a chart it's like it's a hum III unless interested in looking at all the points

on points how much time do I have it's a good 15 seconds I won't go over fate and

free will are like particle and wave the quantum physics says that the universe is both particle and wave that light travels as a wave we measure it it's a

particle there is fate and fate is the particularization of the waveform of the quantum indeterminacy when we pop the

quantum wave function boom that is fate I've never never said there isn't fate fate and free will are like particle and

wave they are like they are like any pair of opposites thank you so first I

need to ask which which of you two wrote the question this was really a collaborative effort yeah I just wanted to understand what because that you're asking do we how we define astrology if

we define as divination or if we use Fourier and I just wanted to understand what the underlying emphasis was because I'm not sure if it was fully clear what you're getting at in terms of how it relates to is prediction killing

astrology well we were looking at the different kinds of prediction that there are you know and different beliefs or concepts or philosophies behind that

okay and so that's where this came from okay then if that's the case then part of the contrast then I think is I would fall more on the side I think compared to Rick we've had conversations about

this before where he views astrology more causally as the planets causing things to happen and one of the ways you conceptualize that is through those low-frequency waves right that's a

tricky question I'll say yes yeah but but but there needs to be other explanation but yes I would agree with that so part of the reason that the idea of astrology as divination has become

popular in the past two decades especially through the work of for Cornelius and and secondarily through the work of people like Carl Jung is astrologers have been reviving a

conceptualization of astrology where the planets are seen as giving signs or indications of events in the future rather than causing them to have it and I guess that's the way that this question is relevant because I don't

necessarily personally believe that the planets are causing things to happen here on earth but instead they're merely reflecting or indicating things that are happening the common analogy is that

like a clock on the wall indicates that it's nine o'clock in the morning without being the cause of the reason that it's 9:00 in the morning that's in some way what the planets are doing and I think

that's the dominant conceptualization of astrology at that point in time so to the extent that that's the case I think

that we can I think that we can make predictions and prediction is relevant and can be made because the planets are reflecting what's happening on here here on earth and if that's the case then

it's not necessarily wrong to do so because we're just describing what is or what will be in a way that's you know the same as describing a calendar or the

clock on the wall thank you Chris all right now you have an opportunity to ask each other questions and I know you had a question you wanted to ask Stephen

sure so what was the context that you do remember it Stephen yeah it was winning the trust of the climate and you're asking how I knew when that had happened oh right okay so you you were so one of

my questions was you were recalling an incident where or a common theme that astrologers experienced where you have like a closed lift fly into it's like crossing their arms and they just want

you to tell them about their life or to kind of impress them and then you just you you basically and that's not your preferred approach you prefer a dialogue all astrologers do and usually astrology

is more effective that way but you then have to just do the reading and you then read their chart and presumably one of the things you try to do his breakthrough that or pierce through

that that sort of wall that they have yes and usually you feel like you're successful in doing that right generally but how how are you successful or what are the implications if you are

successful in doing that like how did you become it's a it's a delicate area but it's uh the idea that most

astrologers are more comfortable with the dialog my my work with clients actually tends towards presentation like

half the work I do is actually recorded and sent to people I always invite information I take it in but in in the

in the context of my might work I'm probably talking 90% of the time I realize that's a bit of an outlier I'm

comfortable with it I'm most comfortable a fight if if I do have some information you know but if I don't again the idea that I I don't feel that I can presume that the client should

trust me that I have to win that trust and and when we're sitting together much of that just comes through human way a person uh uh you know there are always get wide there nodding their head

they're expressing gratitude they the person who had been like this you know relaxes opens up it's just human information when you're feeling trust

and rapport what I'm teaching astrology with my my students I I emphasize a more technical insight it's a rather simple

one when the client reveals the moon you know the moon is that most vulnerable part of what we are when you're loose with somebody your moon will tend to

show more so if I'm sitting with the client with the Aries moon and it goes like this when they start arguing with me I know they trust me the person with the cancer mean you know

and they asked me if I'm tired or if I need a glass of water you know I'm cartooning this a bit I can say it in more sophisticated ways but

but humanly the astrological analysis of the presentation of trust is the revelation of the moon when I see that then typically dialog arises

spontaneously I don't have to ask for it

it arises all right do any of you have questions yes absolutely

Oh somebody asked me to do a reading for a friend of those and I said um no I can't do it like that they have to ask for it themselves but you know how you organize the payment between you that's

fine but I need to know that this person really wants so this young man aright hit them is early November and it happened to be a very cold November but

he arrived at that do you remember um the sandy Mun port did you have that here yeah and the guy is dressed up they used to do a bottle where the guy was

wearing it a black sort of sombrero hat and he's got a black cape around him so this guy arrived at the door wearing shady glasses and covered in black and

he had a stallion in Scorpio which included the moon and he came he came in and I had a list I always have a list of things that I want to talk about and I

usually say look I've got a list I probably won't get through it but sometimes I'll say how many items are on the list and I was about halfway through

this thing and he said um could we talk about secrets and just at that moment you know I knew that actually I I was ok it was gonna be fine but I was very very

nervous about it so yes you're absolutely right first appreciate something that Chris McGrath said which is even though it was my organization that sponsored the

prediction panel sponsor at the 2016 presidential prediction panel whether we should do it again so I have a question

to Chris Brennan and Christine Skinner who were on it um would you do it again

and it's so what would that panel look like how would it be different I mean I

I would you know I don't want to be highly critical if you start because he started as so many great things but I think the way that that panel was

organized was so slapdash it had such broad community implications and that was one of Steven foresters argument and his follow-up article which actually agreed with which is that if this is

going to be the thing that gets out and represents the entirety of the community as astrologers it should if it's gonna happen at all it should be done very well and very deliberately and very carefully and I didn't feel like the

panel was done very well or carefully and it was more focused on sensationalism and so I don't think I would participate again because I

suspect even to the extent of this is still somewhat sensationalistic with the is prediction killing astrology that that will probably be a continuing theme

if it was done again in 2020 thank you Oh exactly for the reasons you said I wouldn't do it again because I found it

a very unpleasant experience it was unpleasant in the fact the whole route beforehand about the time of birth that you know that was really appalling it

you know we really shoot ourselves in the foot for that and certainly I don't want to do anything ever again where it's based where the whole premise is about the media correct I'm very happy

to take part in it so that we all forecast all of us you know and then let's all of us you know share ideas and it doesn't matter if 50 50 50 percent get it right

and 50 percent get it wrong but we actually we've shared the thing but I absolutely know I've not improved the media like that and and was absolutely

shameful really we don't need to shoot ourselves telling the truth it was okay just a very short very short story a

number of years ago I was invited to be on a radio show with James Kelleher who's an amazingly excellent vedic astrologer I think he lives in San

Francisco these days he'd been on the show often before we arrived just a few minutes before the show is a live AM radio show drive time in Seattle in the

studio the person who showed was came out said hey James habla introduced himself to me and said so okay so here's what's gonna happen we're gonna start off we're gonna

introduce them there was a presidential election year you said I'm gonna just talk about the election coming up then I'm going to have each of you write your prediction for who's going to win the election and put it in a sealed envelope

then we're gonna have talk we'll go to a commercial we'll come back and we'll open up the envelopes and kind of make a big deal out of it and I said I don't think so and done and he said well what do you

mean I said well to me astrology is not a game show I'd be happy to talk about the candidates and I'd be happy to discuss the issues that are at play in

the universe right now but I that's if you want me to do that I won't be on the show it's just not what I do and the guy was furious then he said to James well

what about you and he goes I'm kind of with Rick and he said well well we go on in a minute okay he was pissed we sat

down and he introduced us he pulls this sheet of paper out of his destiny goes well I'm with us greatest strong and above habla and I have a sheet of paper in front of me that says and on October

23rd the world we will end what is astrology say about that Rick Levine greatest rock and I said to him as you're temporarily

court-appointed astrologer I'd like to give you the following advice don't cancel appointments for November and at that moment there was that trust thing I

won him over we had a great conversation but but I was at the event oh that booth of those events as a audience member and

it was horrific yeah yeah some good astrology but it was horrific okay let's get a response in verse 15 second follow-up statement so one of the things

I should mention is that's actually relevant from a technical and philosophical standpoint was just one of the issues with the panel for me and one of the things that I learned was the primary technique that I was using

indicated that's very simplistic interpretation was indicated that Hillary was hitting the highest point in her career and Donald Trump would have a career transition that would start about

a year after the election and I didn't understand why Trump would have a major career transition that would last for two years starting a year after the election and I assumed that meant that

he would lose the election and then go on to do something else and now here we are a year later and there's all of these indictments coming out and his sort of future and career is looking a

little bit more uncertain in terms of having the White House and it turned out in retrospect that Hillary did indeed probably hit the highest point of her career at that time but that didn't mean that she would win so there was

something very important there that I had to learn about even though you can sometimes see things with astrology you may not interpret it correctly there may be other variables or other data that

you can't take into account or you may simply miss call what you're looking at based on whatever your biases your your background whatever else and there's always going to be that in variability

in any prediction and so actually to answer your question Sam that's one of the things that I learned that would give me pause about doing another panel is the sort of hubris

involved in thinking that you can always know and get it down that much and maybe there is something to you know being more humble about it as a result of that yeah

can I say something like that Christmas I got her all right I'm sorry told you and so Chris go ahead that is exactly why I say that I think that it

makes it thank you Chris because that's exactly why I say that it makes a very good exercise for astrologers to astrologers or in astrology convention

as a lecture or a learning process but not to expose ourselves excuse the way I

put that let's have a conversation about that I mean because that's the question this should things like this be restricted to classes and analysis of

techniques or should we ever put ourselves out like that in order to check ourselves and test ourselves I mean as a community we really need to make a decision about that instead of

just having it done in more of a slapdash manner but perhaps the community should be involved in deciding whether events like that should happen or whether they should be done worse like classes yeah in fact I just want to

throw something in I'm just going to ask Chris and Christine if they would consider participating in a future panel

if they were involved in the design and process of how that panel was going to occur I don't know because one of the

things that was funny about that panel is I actually decided I was getting out of political astrology after the 2012 election because I realized that politics was getting so nasty than I

thought that astrologers could become targets if they made the wrong prediction or not in the wrong prediction if they made a prediction that a certain political party didn't like that they could be on the receiving

end of harassment and I thought that that ultimately if you go back historically astrologers do tend to get in trouble when they get on the wrong side of the government

power so i actually me being on that panel the only reason I ended up doing it and I was gonna drop out at the last minute was just because I felt like I wanted to be there to make sure it was

done well even though that was going to be my last time doing it and then hilariously of course I got it I get it wrong but I would be involved in helping you guys if you're gonna do it then I'd

at least be involved in helping you to plan it and do it well even if I didn't participate myself terrific all right great Christine you know I know yeah I think I

would like to do it again with you Chris I enjoyed being part of I enjoyed the people right I enjoyed listening to how everybody had come up with their ideas I

was really sorry that the audience didn't have the same there was there wasn't the same it wasn't the interaction and I think that were looking really good there needed to be

almost like a much bigger timeline right and and certainly I would want absolute reassurance that this was not it's not a stunt show Thanks yeah

I don't need the press there for that mm-hmm all right and Sam no I was just gonna say I mean I heard what you said Alan which is that you know she won the popular vote and

you know I know that even there was a statement issued that made that has said that she won the popular vote and I disagree with that in the sense that you know if you're gonna call something the

scam by it have to you know testicular ovarian for fortitude and just stick by you know like she lost the end that mind

of God is tricky alright okay after that disaster I wrote a piece for my my newsletter and the

essence of it was pretty simple like what if instead of who's going to win the election the panel had been the u.s.

election and here's the u.s. chart and

now what is the Dharma of our country now what's going on with our country look at the individual clients how well do they align with the larger

evolutionary context of our country how does their journey and the archetypes behind them resonate with all of this and what synchronistic stuff is likely

to happen you know predicting events and developments in the world or in their lives because astrology is so tuned into synchronicity like what what can astrology say about all this and then

finally oh by the way who do you guess might win you know make making that the least important part of the presentation who do you guess might win given all of

these things so astrology putting its best foot forward its best face forward juicy quotable quotes would have come out of that we could have gotten healthy

press out of that instead we made a subside of ourselves what what though is different about that because we kind of did that on the panel were you at the

panel no no soon in China okay I think I just because I read that in your article because you were you were really the main critic of the panel after the fact and see article is very important what do you see is different in your model

versus what what you think happened at the panel that took place that would be better or an improvement or how could it specifically be improved you know it's it's quite possible I'm coming out of

ignorance here that's a pretty good rule of thumb in general of course the reason I say it is that my assumption about what happened on the panel was based on

what I heard on Facebook what what the media did around the panel astrologers get it wrong again so I wasn't there and the impression I

got which probably reflects the impression that larger world god of the thing was astrologers set out to predict who would win the election and they got it wrong perhaps something entirely

different than that happened so I was not a witness of it I mean the problem is just that even if we did your model ultimately that's still going to be the main thing that press reports even if it's at the end of it it's still going

to be astrologers predict all right about the framing of it and you've got a point the festival right grab something yeah I tend to side with Chris McCrae I don't think we need to make it public

okay we've reached a point where I want to ask the audience a question because the next part of this presentation is you

having a chance to ask the panelist questions but how many of you would like to like a three minute break before we go on I see handsome all right let's

take let's take three four minute break and then come back yeah [Music] renovation and externalizing [Music]

we're not done yet is this prediction so we had an honest

discussion once with a very honest

discussion so we don't we talked about that

I'm just going to stop that he's got to talk to Steve about the [Applause] which are

social under actions like that I'll just go site there's work here but yeah and then I when I was Ronald because [Music]

yeah development rather than illiterates I'm about to get ordained actually or licensed I'm going to be applying some

that's great yeah I spent 20 years of medication so this is some improvements

graduate training since a therapy so so I want to learn that interesting Aries actually a Zen master classified by that

Raven come back so good to continue with questions for each other what we're gonna do is we're gonna allow the now the audience gets a chance to ask their

questions of the panelists and the panelists must respond in two minutes or last week and is there a part where the panelist gets to ask questions of the

audience maybe your answer could be a question all right so raise your hand if

you have a question yes please stand the woman right there right you had your hand up first and could you say your

name and where you're from where we were you've arrived from so leaving aside all

these tricky issues and questions around what each of you think what is the most valuable kind of prediction to make because for some things for example

predicting the outcome of the horse race you could win money only if you like if everybody knows that this is the one

horse that's so great and everybody then the odds are bad so you're not gonna make much money so there's only you know sometimes you could be right and it doesn't really matter because you're not

gonna make any money off of the vet now that's one example in other terms so so being right in other words is not

always there's not always matter so in what areas do you think prediction is valuable for whatever reasons not monitoring there was like for example one that

comes to my mind that I think would be a really valuable form of prediction is

being able to predict say you know

natural disasters like tornadoes so I'm just curious what your thoughts are on

not you know not from a monetary standpoint but from the standpoint of actual value when is prediction

important okay I think the most valuable prediction is any prediction that can make an individual feel that there's an

underlying sense of meaning and purpose in their life and there's many different ways that you can do that I think the most common or the easiest way to do that is through naval astrology but I've

seen that happen with Horry astrologers or election astrologers or relationship analysis astrologers but you know whatever it's a technique you're using whether it's like a Saturn cycle and

being able to show how the transits of Saturn have mapped out important turning points in a person's life and being able to predict where another important turning point is coming up in the future

however archetypal or general that is to the extent that you end up making an accurate prediction I think one of the valve real tangible pieces of value to that is it actually gives people a sense

that there's an order to the cosmos and then there's something purposeful and meaningful about it and to their life rather than it just being this random chaotic purposeless meaningless sort of

thing that's one of the greatest values to astrology and prediction is a access point or a gateway to that however you do it all right if I had four minutes to talk instead of

two that would have been my first five minutes what Chris said however I would take it another step further as he might in two more minutes ooh but I think that

the most important prediction that I can make as an astrologer is not astrological if I tell a client that the

last five times in your life Saturn squaring or conjunctiva posing your son or you moon had some sort of you know bad something attached to it the most

important prediction I can do for a tell a client is if you don't do something about your life today it ain't gonna get any better it's a not at non astrological

prediction the prediction is if you want something to happen in your life and you don't start it today what's the Chinese proverb the best time to plant the tree

is 20 years ago and if you didn't the bet second best time is now that is the prediction it's not as collage achill but it's useful no it's not useful to

just put some date out in the future without having something wrapped around it that becomes a yoga or a practice or a way in which a client can harness the

energy and act and I mean it's exactly what Chris said is the only useful prediction is one that allows the client to make his light his or her life better

and often that is a feeling of oh my god I am part of the cosmos I am not separate from it I have found my place

in the cosmos because the cosmos is in me that is it is profound so agree thank you and what I would say is that going along with you said I think it depends

on the intimacy intimacy related to how we create a circle of influence between the astrologer and another person and the more you broaden that circle of influence the weaker astrology gets

because once you go toward the point of like there's a tornado coming and this is where astrologers go toward delusion no one's gonna listen to the astrologer they don't even listen to the web person right so I think the key thing is

realizing that you have the most impact in terms of a certain circle of influence Chris thank you it's

interesting you should ask that question because I'm going to be doing a talk at this conference about utilizing a geodetic concept that allows us to look

at what's going on on planet earth in terms of cataclysmic events action

weather patterns and various as I spoke earlier about global hot spots and so it

is a framework that can be used in order to look at the prognosis of what could be happening or is a strong possibility

of something that could be happening on this planet physically to physically even politically so at any rate you know

it's it's an idea to have a process that we could attempt to determine those events across this planet isn't it okay

thank you thank you Chris all right next question oh no you got response everybody there is everybody okay the point is she

didn't ask everybody but not everybody has to be so I can't speak for Chris oh don't

thank you so very simply all all prediction if if we're predicting questions and wisely suggesting the

right answers all prediction is as practical and and useful there's no prediction that wouldn't be and the framework in which I make predictions which is really not prediction at all

but instead questions and archetypal fields but the tone of your question was it was very practical which horse is going to win the race you know and stuff

like that and an astrology can can address questions like that it's it's not it's not the flower of our craft but what we can do it I had a funny

experience like this I used to pretty big association with the music business in America through when there was a music business you know the big record

companies and so on and a guy wasn't one of the suits you know he's he's got a back he's got two artists and he's got to figure out which one he's gonna back and his his career is kind of resting on

getting it right and so he asked me he had their birth information and it was I still have very mixed feelings about this the artist I like better

his transits and progressions for the next year or so didn't look too good the other guy I didn't like so much but you

know he's all Jupiter City coming up and so you know I love the suit he was my pal so I said you know back this second guy and he got you know country music

artist of the year the next year it was a very practical thing about which horse to back you know which which company looks like it's going to make money this year astrology you know can definitely

do that I just it's not the kind of most interested in it's not the highest expression of the craft but it sure works you know I'll only make the comment that I

because I work with sort of Business and Finance oh yes I do the prediction I was saying yes I think there's comfort you know this company looks better than that

one or for this particular period and then I would do that but and that I think is a practical use of it and it's usually because the person in front of me is saying look I've got 20 choices

here it just helped me out right so it's just it's narrowing it down all right next question right here

hi my name's Emily fledgling astrologer um so still getting my astrology

confidence what do you say to people and maybe this is something from your past because you made me no experience this any more that come to you with this idea

that can you predict this can you put it like like what is your answer like how do you oh my god how do you do how do you do how do you deal with people who

who who think astrology is like the people that Rick Levine was dealing with how do you deal with those people like in a personal very short answer I've

been using this answer for years you called me up on the phone with that kind of question I go I think you've misdialed I think you're looking for the answer astrologer and you've

accidentally reached the question astrologer I'm happy to listen to your issue to look at the astrology to talk about what might be going on and to help

you develop better questions but I'll tell you something as a potential client I would never answer a question for you because I wouldn't even do that for someone I love I'm good at giving

answers but you're going to get my answer not your answer my job is to help you get your answer because if you get a good answer for me it's gonna stop your

process and I ain't gonna do that that's my standard answer and I know people

there are plenty people who do and I'm happy to give you their phone numbers I know really good astrologers who will answer questions like the many heads of Hydra that as fast as you answer the ask them they won't they will answer them

and that's okay that's not my astrology that's all I would say I mean it's my job is not to unveil you as if you're I'm an artist

and yet you are unfinished as much as you know I say fate has two arms one of them is your own is learning to work

that other arm Chris I mean part of the answer to the question is just there's different astrologers that specialize in different things and when a client contacts you you should quickly ascertain if they

have the type of questions that you feel comfortable answering and you they may and based on your specialty of whatever you specialize in or they may may not in which case you refer it to another

astrologer but different astrologers obviously just by the responses here have different levels of comfort in terms of the types of questions they're willing to answer whether they answer

them at all the answer that we give when that question is asked from students in China because it's a common question everywhere is it's about managing the

expectations of your client and you help to manage the expectations of your client by the information you've provided about yourself and your work so

that the client knows initially you know from your platform this is the kind of work I do this is what you can expect from me so that starts the process of

managing the expectations of your clients so that's that's another answer to them okay all right next question all right go

since Teresa's relationship synastry yeah rien those types of charts all right you would like to take that close you'd like to repeat that the

question is what do you think about synastry and relationship charts well the role of prediction with synastry and

relationship charts okay all right Steven go first I love doing that because I think I

think relationships are good for people you know I think we we grow faster and evolve faster if we're if we if we're loving somebody there's lots of ways to love people friendships are good for us

but synastry is mostly about couples and and so you know if I'm working with a couple and they love each other they're stable they've been together a while and one of them has gone through what's a

big Iranian time and they're going to need you know a little more freedom I love to sit with them and and you know explain that to both of them and you

know the partner you know don't don't over react to to your partner's need to spread his or her wings a little bit you know if you love this person set them

free you know so to speak and and don't be don't be afraid of this and and you who are going through the Iranian event it would be mindful that that the

blockages to your freedom are mostly in your own head and and you're right for getting past them don't blame your partner be careful of projecting your

issues onto your partner and obviously it's a big subject but that that's the spirit of it briefly so I feel like I'm using astrology to support love in a

time that that we're misunderstandings could arise and unnecessary and inappropriate to us operation or endings could arise so in support of love you know we can apply

these predictions of questions to synastry thank you of the panelists for their response to that I mean part of it

is just that one of the tricky things one of the things I meant to mention my opening is that it's only in the past few decades that a more predictive oriented forms of astrology have arisen in the astrological community the

movement in the 60s and 70s was away from predictive astrology towards psychological astrology for most of the past century and it's only in the past couple of decades that suddenly you have these older forms of astrology come out

coming back that can make more precise predictions and astrologers are actually still struggling to determine the scope of that and what's appropriate in modern times when is it appropriate to make a

prediction about a relationship or a marriage or if a person will be married or or how many marriages a person will have or what have you there's a lot of very good questions surrounding that

that astrologers each find their own answers to but one of the things that I think some of the traditional astrologers are realizing is not everything needs to be predicted or just because you can make a prediction or you

feel pretty strongly about something in a person's chart doesn't necessarily mean that you should so this is where some of the modern sensibilities from people's work like Stephens work and

other psychological or psycho-spiritual astrologers who are bringing modern counseling dynamics and sensibilities into astrology that's a very useful and valid still in traditional context and

that's something I think a lot of traditional predictive astrologers are still wrestling with because the lines aren't always clear about what's appropriate what's not but do no harm I

think is is the thing that everyone agrees on is is keep your clients best interest in mind but even then that there's still sometimes question about what is the clients best interest and because each

case may differ when it comes to relationships very short answer here we're adding to

the discussion is that we as astrologers need to be painfully obsessively aware of our own biases individually

culturally racially genderly etc etc etc because we can not we can we do what's

the word confer them on to our clients without even knowing it even if we're conscious and so we look in a synastry chart and we immediately

you know take our stuff and put it on in mouth yeah you know I have three bad marriages and each of my former wives head the moon in Capricorn this is not

me but therefore a client comes in and her husband has the moon in Capricorn it's like oh he's an you know you know I mean we do this without even

thinking about it we bring our issues about all kinds of issues whether they're gender issues you know even you

know the whole issue of trans binary sexuality etc monogamy I mean it's wide and so we have to be careful about how

we infringe our judgments on that are not astrological using the astrological metaphor and making it sound like we're

doing astrology I get a question from this man right here I just want to piggyback off of what you were saying there how do we as

astrologers become clearer channels for giving the predictions and the feedback to the clients that that we're working with how what are some of the techniques

that all of you have used to maybe as a personal purification so that you're becoming and bringing more objectivity to your work yes good question you would

like to take that question first Stephen is so psychic a skirt well you know I it'd be easy to sound preachy here but

the wisdom of the astrologer is the most important feature in the whole system so there are fine fine wise astrologers and

Hellenistic tradition Jewish tradition evolutionary psychological so how do we cultivate that that wisdom and that

seems inseparable from having some kind of spiritual life you know it'd be the last one to pass out Hari Krishna literature at this point you know

everybody has their own way but to that silence that surrendering to to the divine is as a regular daily practice is

fundamental to keeping us clear to follow your own path but but that's the essence of it I had one more layer that

the practice of astrology itself is very helpful in addressing this exact question because if you do not tolerate

diversity you have no business being an astrologer because astrology is nothing but the celebration of an exploration of human diversity that's what it's all about

so in any any astrologer who's got built-in prejudices against other systems of astrology against a race against a gender it has no business in the few

as far as I'm concerned but such as such an astrologer if they practice with some diligence is going to have people very different from them in their face you

know in the form of clients and and so gradually look the rock of your rigid judgments does get worn away by the practice of astrology you learned to put

yourself in the shoes of so many different kinds of people that over over a lifetime of this practice your heart opens to human diversity at a in a

skillful way you know based on unreal experience so astrology helps solve this problem I would I would add to that I

mean I begin every session with a prayer that doesn't mean vote particularly a guy right I mean I'll say you know there'd be a blessing upon the reading or I don't know whose blessing but

that's the idea and then I think the other thing that we've talked about a number of times is a question because William Lily an astrologer from a 17th century talked about this as well it's

the intention of your heart and living a moral life whatever that might mean for you you know and kind of whether that's in alignment with God as you see God but as Steve was talking about in terms of

diversity but also in terms do you practice what you preach do you Lendl according to what you feel is right and I think that's because that becomes a way a channel that you open up as a

channel toward your astrology and I think a lot of strong leaders perceive it as this quotient well clinical scientific objective thing that they just can approach it without realizing

it's still very spiritual endeavor that's a response okay yep one of the key phrases in your that was in your question is part of the

answer which is in that moment when the session starts there is a moment of surrender and that's that's key you may

have spent hours preparing if you're a new stronger whatever your methods what are your techniques you may have been walking around thinking about what you were gonna say or what questions you

were gonna ask and that moment forget it just surrender to that moment okay alright quick quote

yes like chögyam rufus Shaner oppa said enlightenment is the egos greatest

disappointment question back there yes other times we'd like to take that

question here are there times when you should keep silent are there times when you should keep silent about a

prediction that is in your mind that you are thinking about yeah I mean that's what I said earlier than just because an astrologer can say something doesn't necessarily mean that they should or

that it's appropriate to especially in a modern consulting setting I mean that's one of the first that's one of the main rules that most astrologers learn pretty quickly and especially most predictive

astrologers learn and it's something that astrologers even in the past 10 or 20 years are still navigating with for example you start putting a code of ethics in place only I think in the

2000s right yeah like circa 2000 so Ash multiple organizations even over the past couple of decades are still struggling with especially now with the diversity of astrology how to create an

ethical code of what's appropriate for a consulting setting that's true for all astrologers and sometimes different traditions have different standards or different things that's appropriate depending on how you're approaching

things but I think one thing that's true among all of them is just that just because you can say something doesn't necessarily mean that you should but then there's just a difference between

conversations about what we should and can say to clients versus what is possible with astrology in general and I do think it's important than astrologers within the community are allowed to have

those conversations where we see just what we can do and how far we can go with astrology outside of a client setting

excellent thanks Chris can I pick up on some yes um some years ago oh if my husband was working at night and he was

a musician and I took to calling an astrological friend about nine o'clock at night and we would talk about the different clients we had in the cases we

were on and he was some miles away in another town I said which makes this even more bizarre what happened but over about a fortnight so and think we would

be on the phone for about 20 minutes each time but man o'clock at night six nights a week and I was dealing with what seemed to me to be a very complicated case he had one that was

very interesting so we were talking about all of this and at some point we both realized that we were advising the

opposite science on a takeover this is this is really I mean this is really important this because we suddenly realized it Uranus was on the Midheaven

at the moment that we realized right and we didn't know what we were going to do and I said what do we do now and he said

I think we hang up which we did right and then we had to start to think about it because neither of us had signed anything with our respective clients to

say that we wouldn't be talking to anybody else right now this was an ethic it's an ethical dilemma I mean it's one that lawyers are with all the time but it's not something that I would think

with the irregularity with astrologers but so I sorry I've gone slightly off from what the question was but the this whole thing about ethics is I think

something that is as we become better at what we do and frankly I think the quality of astrology is moving up all the time I really do think from the advent of the computers the fact that we

can do so much more research than we do the fact that we are careful about what we say in the way that maybe we weren't so much before we're going to have to

cross all these professional hurdles because that is the right word and I think we actually need more and more gatherings now like this to discuss how

we're gonna do that sorry I preach together all right

another question in the back louder louder please introduce yourself

strong do we believe that astrology can

be used as evidence that God exists

that's the question nope alright I think that astrology has a spiritual component

to it but that doesn't mean that everyone who uses astrology has a spiritual component to the astrology they practice so I think that it really

is an individual question I think that one can be an astrologer and an atheist and that is have no theology but I think

that it's much more likely that as one delves into astrology which is about meaning in the cosmos that one develops

a theology whether one believes that astrology has anything to do with God or not there still is a connection to the magic to the spirituality of the

universe and qualifying with that to this to say after I left the ministry I went into the logically and something you probably can relate I went into the holiness of atheism and it took me a

while to come out what brought me out to some degree was astrology that didn't prove for me that God existed but that there wasn't there was there was

something else right that was a mystery know what that is and you could become a hardcore atheist and say there's nothing but that's just I think delusional in its own right but I think that there is

something but I wouldn't say you can prove God exists as you were saying can I go for it so start with a very

specific piece of astrology of we imagined a happy stable relationship to people who treasure each other and you

will find a description of of each each person's partner in the Charter the first person you know like I have shattered into seven thousand I married

a Capricorn you know there are things of that nature so where I take tips and what's circled right back to the heart of the question so let's say a little boy is born he's destined to be a

heterosexual little boy and I look at his chart the kid is a minute old and I've got his chart and I described his partner you know I can come up with a

fairly accurate description of the partner who hasn't even been born yet isn't that amazing I'm describing that in a sense the chart

of somebody that doesn't even yet exist that much intelligence is built into the birth chart of this kid who is just born

if that's not the mind of God well I guess I'm an atheist and feels like divinity magic evidence of something

transcendent giving an order to the universe that that we can only perceive through astrology or what we call faith

but astrology is the concretization of this experience that there is some higher order of things and some higher order of things is a pretty good

definition of God as far as I'm concerned so that's my response thank you

all right next question please

all right with that diversity there's a struggle in unification in terms of

prediction at least with elections like people can look at the same data and come up with completely different interpretations now predictions they can

at least you know affect client and eventually community to the community so how can he handle this moody diversity bottom lines and everything the kind of

create a prediction or solution I can kind of help it because we all were all coming from the different perspectives how can we kind of unite in news prediction as a wave

do you understand they could Mike you probably want to repeat the question David go ahead if you can concisely say that louder

that's great young astrology is very diverse it highlights that diversity but at the same time without diversity there

it can be an like dis unification and when it comes to prediction people make a lot of different predictions based on you know you know different mindsets and

with those differences how can we all come together and kind of use astrology in a way that is useful when it comes to prediction when it comes to me

okay when it comes to the community okay that's interesting who would like to take that sure so that this is something we went through at Kepler at Kepler College ten years ago when they were

still teaching college courses on astrology because they would have you take a bunch of different courses on different traditions in order to get your degree and all the students would go through this process where on the one

hand they'd be simultaneously incredibly overwhelmed by the number of the diversity of the different astrological traditions and all of this sometimes varying or conflicting techniques and

approaches they would use but then at other times they would be fascinated how sometimes you can have a wildly different tradition like modern psychological astrology or medieval

astrology or Vedic Astrology who sometimes can come to the same conclusion from from radically different perspectives and sometimes seeing that overlap where you can have completely different tool sets or completely

completely different traditions come to similar conclusions is interesting and informative in and of itself but in terms of how the community deals with this it's it's not anything that's going to be resolved anytime in the near

future because the revival of all these different forms of astrology is so recent that it's going to be the great crisis of most probably the next century before astrologers fully work out how to

reconcile and how to maybe merge in some sense all these all of these different systems in the meantime we just have to be able to have dialogues like this one where you have a diverse group of different astrologers trying to present

their differing and sometimes opposing views and through that that dialogue hopefully eventually something will shake out of it that looks like a

consensus or at least as close to a consensus as we can get anyone else on that no okay great thank you for that question

all right over here of charlie state your name and where you're from

I know who casts dreamwalk in your Chinese Chinese sky

there's region and machines for everyone - the first day is the event the second

one is this a college is a college and the third one is that the meaning of and

so does it were also work in prediction work it seems that the prediction always

linked to the two events but not psychology or on meaning you know my

work very well thank you yeah it's a you know a simple idea that miserable G is is can you hear me okay in the backup I'm still sitting down do

it okay I'm half deaf so I've sympathy for some of you older folks near the back um that that and any astrological

transit or progression or any natal feature will have three three different levels of meaning the the level that is most central as far as I'm concerned

it's the one that refers to the the evolutionary purpose what what what your spirit is trying to learn in this lifetime what it might look like if you get it right a lot of astrologers don't

even wrestle with the question like that to me it's the heart of the matter that there there's something you're needing to learn here and that's like the evolutionary level or the level of per

and you can get that writer you can get that wrong and then because of your interaction with that field of of energy

and possibility there will be emotional and interior responses to it and you will experience happier states more satisfied interstates if you're in

harmony with that larger Dharma you will feel upset if you're out of touch with it like God Mars is hitting a sensitive point time

to be bold time time to take your own part time to be courageous have a little fire in your belly you know that's the nature of a Mars time that's the evolutionary meaning of it if

you get that right you know you have you have a certain fiery other enthusiasm engagement you know you're a lot if you're passionate and you're kind of

fierce you know make my day there's some of that energy but if you make it make a negative response to it the psychological reality will be that you

you feel resentful or frustrated anger you you slam the door or you kick the dog you know you're these these are

negative responses and and so psychologically we can recognize a range of responses to a transit and then at the level of events you know what are

you gonna do this Mars thing you're going to act in a bold way there's territory you need to claim or something you need to stand up for and defend and

we'll have that kind of bold action on your part if you get it right if you get it wrong you'll chicken out so to speak you know you'll you'll let fear make the

decision for you we'll have an event of in the category of cowardice or inappropriate surrender or slamming doors and kicking dogs which are of course concrete so everything will

operate at the level of of purpose and then a set of psychological responses that range over high and then a set of events that are really

the caboose of the Train the last the last layer I'm much more interested in predicting the questions which is to say the evolutionary meaning of the event

and then because of synchronicity you will have some concrete or material event going on as well but then that will be the the result of of your

response to the deeper questions so that's kind of a whole philosophy of astrology and a minute 58 yeah does that make good sense to you Charlie

great okay great I have a question right here yeah yes so Steven this means that in your opinion astrology can be used

retrospectively as well as prospectively to measure validate encouraged the person's evolutionary trajectory absolutely Rick made a beautiful point

about post diction of heaven right yeah a useless fantasy of maybe when I was younger I was thinking I wouldn't even talk about the future anymore how people come in and let's talk about what the

last year of your life meant I think in many ways five years exactly exactly when you're reborn with a cancer moon

you'll do that but yes we when we already have the facts because history is behind us an astrology can help you

know what that meant you know what you learned you generate mindfulness and integrate it more or what you fail to learn and so the next time you're presented with those questions maybe

you're inspired to get them right okay and so taking it to the next level now astrological prediction for the that's exactly what I was getting when I

went like this that was exactly what I was gonna address before you asked the question and just a very quick observation here we spent time with

prediction and not post diction and we spend life with past life regression not post life progression because all of the traditions all the traditions agree

unless in the traditions the various mystical traditions whether it's mystic Christianity or Buddhism are in they all agree that when that if you take if you

take the jump and and believe based upon evidence your experience or whatever I'm not saying reincarnation that's this next step but if you believe that

consciousness doesn't require meat okay if you believe that that consciousness exists just fine without a body attached to it all the traditions agree that in

that state that where consciousness exists without manner that what we think of as past and future do not exist that

something happens in the reptile brain that creates the illusion of cause and effect of linearity which then goes back to that whole cause-and-effect delusion

thing that I said I agree with but I'm saying that there that may be allusion to but the point is is that past lives and future lives are no different than the past and the present everything

that's ever happened and everything that ever will happen is happening right now we just get it discontinuously and so now that being interrupted with

that I'm really interested in hearing what Stephen has to say I think the one thing I want to introduce is that it's important for people to be clear on

their own belief systems you know in terms of how you frame these particular things so and I can't really speak for Chris but I think I have an idea I mean we both subscribe more to stoic thought so the idea of thinking more along the

line of evolution thus all your next life you don't mean anything to us in that sense so you have to kind of know in terms of contextualise contextualizing the way

that you look at the cosmos and how you look at your life and the life trajectory so that's important because we start framing things related to astrology based on what I'm going to say it this way your dogma and I do look at

in terms of how you talk about it as your dogma so that's one thing to keep in mind okay yes and another thing to

keep in mind is that we are at the end of this presentation so what I would like to do is to thank the panelists let's give them a big

and I think we're gonna have an amazing new AK great way to start yeah